Privacy Policy

At Folkestone & District Mind we want everyone who supports us, or who receives a service from us, to feel confident about how we use and protect any personal information that you share with us. This privacy notice is intended to explain how we collect and process data in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2018.

We are committed to protecting your personal data and making sure that we collect only the data that we need, that it is processed in a fair, transparent and lawful manner, that it is kept no longer than necessary and that it is thereafter securely destroyed.

We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal data we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

We will never sell or share your personal data with other organisations for marketing purposes. We do not use any form of profiling or automated decision making.

Supporters

If you are supporting us, for example by making a donation, we will collect data about your identity and any other information you choose to provide us with. The lawful basis on which we collect this data is ‘consent’. We will ask for your consent at the point at which we collect the data from you. The information will be used to process your engagement with us, for example processing a donation or Gift Aid.

We may also want to contact you with information about our work, such as events and training or other ways you can support us. However we will only contact you in this manner if we have your explicit consent to do so. We will always let you know how you can stop receiving communications from us, for example with an ‘unsubscribe’ link in an email newsletter.

If you attend an event or take part in a promotional activity, we may ask to take your photograph or film you. We will need your consent in order to take and use these images fairly and lawfully.

If you share your personal experience or the experiences of a friend or relative, we may also collect this data. This kind of sensitive information is called ‘special category’ data, and we will treat it with extra care and confidentiality as discussed in the next section.

Services

If we are providing you with a mental health service, the lawful basis on which we collect personal data is ‘legitimate interest’. The legitimate interest we have identified is the pursuit of our mission as a mental health charity – ‘to work with and on behalf of people with mental health problems, ensuring their fair and equal treatment, and to promote better mental health for all.’ To provide an effective and safe service we need to process information about your mental health. This is ‘special category’ data, and we will treat it with extra care and confidentiality. The lawful basis under which we process special category data is that we are providing health and/or social care services, and we process this data only so far as is necessary for the provision of these services.

If we have an agreement or contract with you to provide a specific service, for example a training programme or counselling, the lawful basis on which we collect and process data is ‘contract’. This means that we are processing data in order to fulfil – or respond to your request to determine if we are able to fulfil – our obligations to you under the agreement.

We will only use personal and special category data to provide and evaluate the services we provide. We will not pass on the data we have about you to anyone else without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances, the lawful basis of which is ‘vital interests’. Examples of these circumstances might include information that suggests you might be danger to yourself or someone else, or information about a child at risk of harm or neglect.

Your rights

You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal data that we hold about you, along with information on what personal data we use, why we use it, who we share it with, and how long we keep it for.

If you have given us your consent to use personal data (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.

You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal data held about you.

You can ask us to delete your personal data where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, if you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.

You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal data that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.

You can ask us to restrict the personal data we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.

Note that some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or if you want to discuss with us any aspect of our privacy practices or make a complaint, please contact our Data Controller as shown below. Should you be unable to resolve a matter with us you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/